


phoenix

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Murder, Blood, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 22:17:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20021911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Unfinished fic where Crowe gets injured in Kingsglaive but doesn't die. Guess it's a oneshot.





	phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> What’s the point of magic if you can’t heal yourself, you know? Crowe was supposedly one of the best mages the Kingsglaive had, and she was the one sent to pick up Luna. The fact that she got fridged so easily? A travesty.

Every member of the Kingsglaive had magic, but what they used it for was up to them. Nyx preferred warping; Libertus preferred invisibility, sneak attacks. Crowe was a cut above with magic and the options were wider for her: when blades proved ineffective, what could stand against a fiery tornado?

All of them could heal, but simple fact was: if you were being shot at your priority would be to stop someone from shooting at you. If you were injured and weren’t bleeding out, you’d want a professional to heal you- quickly, painlessly, _properly_. And if you had scars and were mobile, you didn’t have the luxury of energy to heal them.

Kingsglaive were fighters, not healers. But between Nyx, and Libertus, and her? She had a wealth of magic at her disposal, and hers was as good as anyone’d get.

* * *

It wasn’t a mistake. She hadn’t done anything _wrong_. She was heading to a meeting point- she was supposed to escort Lady Lunafreya safely to Insomnia. She’d taken a shortcut off-road, was enjoying the sun, the wind in her face, the thrill of being _chosen_ to protect the _Oracle,_ and then there was movement to her side, something coming directly for her. She glanced, expecting a voretooth-

-and then a roaring bang, _pain_. Something knocked her sideways off her bike, sent her rolling across the dusty desert dirt. Her helmet struck rock, twice, thoughts rattling around as she rolled to a stop. A gunshot? Her head, her stomach, her fucking _body_ hurt from the spill off her bike. She found herself groaning, dizzy, biting back further cries back as she tried to staunch the bleeding.

Some dispassionate, detached part of her brain told her she had seconds to minutes before shock knocked her out and blood loss killed her. It told her that someone wanted her injured or dead, and she was Kingsglaive, so she couldn’t go down without a fight.

In response she could feel the magic gathering on her fingertips, could feel the unpleasant stinging as her body hastily healed muscle and skin and nerves to make up for what had been absolutely obliterated by a bullet. She wasn’t looking at the wound, though. Her vision was blurring black around the edges, but she saw movement, saw someone coming closer with a gleam of metal in their hand.

Something about them made her falter.

They shot her as she summed the nerve and the magic to shoot them.

* * *

The impact of the second shot knocked the strength from her body, knocked her flat on the ground.

It fucking hurt, and she could feel consciousness slipping away even faster than before. Someone nudged her stomach with their boot as her eyelids fluttered. One wound was bad enough, and now she had to deal with two? She might have whimpered. She might not have. But she knew enough that someone wanted her dead, that they’d seen she was alive and had decided to shoot her again. They had shot before she had. They knew what they were doing.

She smelled burning fabric, burning flesh. She’d hit them, but the fact they were on their feet meant she’d missed her target- maybe grazed an arm. (She’d aimed at their chest. She was certain she hadn’t hit that.)

There was the crunch of gravel and dirt as the person turned and walked away. They paused, now and then- to look back at her? To check a phone, or look at the sky?- so she forced herself to wait precious seconds.

There was silence as she felt her fingers, toes, nose and lips growing cold; silence as her breathing tried to stop and she had to tell herself: inhale. Exhale. _Come on, Crowe; you have a job to do._

No sound for a while- but was that because the person was gone, or because she was dying and couldn’t hear?

She had to do it now, or she wouldn’t get the chance. There was wetness on her fingertips; her hands were still near the gaping wounds in her gut and chest. Then there was magic on her fingertips, the fire of her magic healing her, and consciousness slipping away with every pulse of pain.

She wouldn’t be able to heal herself if she lost consciousness. She needed to hold on.

And yet-

* * *

There was buzzing in her ears, the tickle of something skittering across her face. Consciousness was slow; it was warm, it smelled like blood, and then she remembered getting shot.

She jolted.

She immediately regretted that as her whole body _hurt_. Everything hurt, but her stomach howled. Flesh tore; blood had dried on her fingertips, but a fresh coat assured her she was either alive or in hell. She _was_ alive, though. She’d been shot, twice, left for dead in the middle of nowhere, had healed herself, knocked herself out with pain, and she was _still fucking alive_.

A fly landed on her hand and she flinched. Then there was the disgusting realization that a cloud of flies had literally flown away from her. They’d been crawling all over her, thinking her a corpse, drinking her blood, crawling on wounds that hadn’t been fully healed.

She sat there for a while, trying to will herself to heal and getting nothing. She felt like a corpse. Weak from blood loss, knocked flat by the pain, unable to coax her legs to move and support her weight. Parched from lying in the desert; sunburned, skin too small for her body. Shivering, because she couldn’t have been out for mere minutes; she’d likely been dead to the world overnight, exposed to the elements with only her riding clothes to protect her.

(They were designed to help with the wind chill, though. They’d done their job.)

Phone. She needed her phone- but that had been in her jacket pocket, and wasn’t it her damn luck that there was a sizable hole and shards of glass and plastic glittering on her fingers.

Fuck. The Astrals had shit on her, and they continued to shit on her.

But she was still alive, and someone had done their damnedest to kill her. They might still have succeeded, if she didn’t get shelter, food, rest, didn’t recover from whatever hell her body had just been put through.

(If her phone was destroyed, she reasoned, she might have to cut herself open- glass and plastic would be stuck in her body, and while it wouldn’t kill her outright, it wouldn’t be pleasant.)

It could have been coincidence- a random attack on a random lady riding her bike off the desert road. What was left of her guts told her it wasn’t. They’d hit a moving target; they’d been waiting for her. (How had they known she would take a shortcut?) She still had her wallet. They hadn’t patted her down for a phone. They’d come up to make sure the job was done, left her far off the road, where nobody travelling to or from Insomnia would find her.

But no- if they’d come up to see that the job was done, why didn’t they make sure and shoot her in the… face?

She’d seen their face. She was certain of it. But she couldn’t- fucking- _remember_. Why couldn’t she remember? She’d paused, just for a fraction of a second. Why had she paused?

She didn’t have time for that.

_Come on, Crowe. You have a job to do._

_Escort Lady Lunafreya to Insomnia._

She took a deep breath and tried to stand.

**Author's Note:**

> Title was entirely based off this post by [Relative Pronoun](https://relative-pronoun.tumblr.com/post/139054528203) on tumblr. Their post had nothing to do with FF15, but "feeling like a phoenix who would rather have stayed dead" just stuck in my mind all these years.


End file.
